Monk Profiles

Here are brief profiles of some members of the Saint Meinrad
monastic community.

Br. John Glasenapp, OSB

Monk-Senior

Title: StudentBorn: June 21, 1978Professed: February 2, 2007

Prior Work/Life Experience:
I spent two years after my undergraduate working in administration
for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, teaching piano privately, and
working part-time in a music store. My ambition at that time
was to pursue my doctorate in musicology, so while I was working I
was also taking courses in Latin, Irish, French, Gregorian chant
and opera while doing lots of reading and writing. I began
graduate school at University of Chicago in 2003 just as I was also
beginning to discern monastic life.

Education History:

2001 - B.A. in music, DePaul University, Chicago, IL

2001 - B.M. in music and business, DePaul University, Chicago,
IL

Work in the Monastery:
I am a full-time student in our School of Theology and am becoming
more involved with liturgical music here. I also do a fair bit
of gardening in the summer months.

Other Interests:
I like learning and I like improving. I also love to watch
people around me engaged in what they do well. My interests
mostly seem to revolve around those themes. I love watching a
garden grow, struggling through a new language, unraveling a piece
of music, hiking in a place I've never been, trying foods I've
never heard of, and then convincing the people around me to try the
same thing.

What Attracted Me to Monastic Life:
When I was first beginning to experience a call to conversion, I
felt ill-prepared and tongue-tied. I could hardly express the
sorts of questions that were suddenly bothering me. I also had
some serious reservations. Providentially, I had the good
fortune to make early acquaintance with a few Benedictines. In
our talks, I was blown away by their agility and adeptness at
integrating faith concepts with life experience in a way that gave
them both sense. It was a sense that I was not at all finding in my
other studies.

Later on, I learned this connection was one of St. Benedict's
primary interests. Benedict understood that faith and its
fruits, including prayer, would remain diffuse and irrelevant
unless each of us allowed faith to mingle with the raw grit of
daily life. So a Benedictine is not only a person of prayer,
but also a student of life and the real-life situations of our
world. Community living, work, silence, liturgy, hospitality,
discipline, recreation all help keep a monk's feet on the ground
and, in a distinct way, help bring him to a deeper and more
constant state of prayer.

What is a Monk?

A monk is a man who lives in a community with other monks where
all work together to seek God in their prayer and in their
work.